


Do You Want to Play a Game?

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been Barton’s idea. </p><p>His idea, and his grey eyes crinkled and the corners of his mouth twitched as he looked over at Natasha whilst explaining it. The game, he said, was called Assassins. </p><p>Natasha’s right eyebrow raised at that, but she made no other comment. </p><p>Stark, also looking over at Romanoff, grinned. “Continue, Legolas.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Want to Play a Game?

It had been Barton’s idea. 

His idea, and his grey eyes crinkled and the corners of his mouth twitched as he looked over at Natasha whilst explaining it. The game, he said, was called Assassins. 

Natasha’s right eyebrow raised at that, but she made no other comment. 

Stark, also looking over at Romanoff, grinned. “Continue, Legolas.”

“It’s simple. Real simple.” Barton grabbed a spoon from the mess of cutlery discarded to dry on the draining board. “See this? This is your weapon.”

“You can’t kill someone with a spoon.” Jane said flatly, not looking up from her laptop. Natasha and Bucky exchanged looks, and the rest of the company fell conspicuously silent. “I mean, you-“ She stuttered, looking around at faces that had been carefully schooled into blank expressions. “Surely you can’t-“

“Probably best not to dwell too much on that one, Dr. Foster.” Stark clapped her lightly on the back and she threw him a wild look but opted not to take it any further. “Barton?”

“Your spoon is your weapon. You have a target. Your mission, should you choose to accept it-“ He grinned around at them all as he paused. “Is to take out your target with absolutely no witnesses to the deed whatsoever.”

“Take out?” Steve said slowly, eyes flickering cautiously over Dr. Foster, whose laptop screen he could see and whose typing was becoming illegible. 

“Tap ‘em on the back with the spoon.” Barton clarified. Jane let out a breath she wasn’t fully aware she’d been holding, and Darcy, flopped across the counter to her left, grinned widely. Steve couldn’t help but notice the brunette assistant hadn’t seemed half as bothered as her boss. 

“Once you’ve disabled your target, they have to tell you their target.” Barton gestured around the waiting faces with his spoon. “That becomes your new target. And so on, until there’s just a one-on-one battle and then the winner reigns supreme. You in?”

They were. 

It was, perhaps, unsurprising that Jane was first out. It might have been slightly more surprising that it was Darcy who did it. “What the hell, Lewis?” Jane had spluttered after the cool metal of the spoon against her bare shoulder jerked her away from the document she’d been editing to include her latest findings. 

Darcy, dressed in a sloppy over-sized sweater and ripped jeans, had shrugged unapologetically, tapping her spoon against her thigh. “Sorry Boss Lady. All’s fair and all that. So who’s your target?” 

Steve had fallen next. 

He’d protested that it was hardly fair that Barton had shot the spoon, tied to an arrow, into the back of his Kevlar vest as he was strapping it on for a mission; but as no one could actually attest to have seen Barton loose his bow, the motion was carried and Rogers joined Foster on the bench. 

“Hey, if you didn’t get hit now, you’d only get hit later, right?” She’d said cheerfully as she bumped into him at breakfast the day after he’d been spooned – as it were – and he narrowed his eyes at her, shoving bread grumpily into the toaster and ramming the lever down. “Oh-kay.” Jane turned on her heel and opted to exit the kitchen in favour of safer climes. 

Men and their games. 

Steve was slightly mollified three days later when Natasha snuck up behind Barton during a mission and tapped him smartly between the shoulder blades. Barton complained fervently the whole way through the rest of the missions and then the mission debrief, and insisted that it was part of the rules that the game could only be played in the tower and not, under any circumstance, outside of it. 

“That was not specified anywhere in your explanation, Barton.” Steve said, pasting an innocent expression across his face, knowing full well it fooled absolutely no one, least of all the shorter man in front of him who was clenching his fists. 

“Well technically you all saw it-“

“Only on the monitors after the fact.” Stark grinned. “Not as a live event. Still counts.”

“It’s my goddamned game.” Barton mumbled to himself, but bowed out none the less. 

Darcy took out Thor next, crowing as she’d smacked him in the lower back with her spoon, but he hadn’t really understood the game – nor felt the spoon. Apparently on Asgard there was no such thing as an assassin, the warriors preferring instead to meet their foes head on. 

“Sort of explains how Loki got away with so much.” Stark whispered in Banner’s ear. “Guess they never suspected sneak attacks.” Banner smiled, refusing to engage too much. He’d opted out of the game; never really intending to join in anyway but completely backing off when the discussion had descended into an argument about whether he counted as one or two targets. 

“No one needs to spoon the Hulk.” He’d argued, hands up and palms out, and Stark had collapsed into a fit of giggles at his wording. “That’s not what I meant.” He’d protested, hands and eyes dropping, his shoulders hunching in resignation. It hadn’t made a difference, and the others had started to laugh as well. Banner disappeared to the sanctity of the lab. 

Bucky surprised them all by removing Stark next. He’d snuck into Tony’s workshop and affixed a spoon carefully in the back of one of his Iron Man suits. Then waited. Patiently. Extremely patiently, as it went. 

It turned out, after Tony had gone over FRIDAY’s video files; that Bucky had actually slipped away just after Barton’s initial sign up speech, down to the workshop and taped the spoon into the suit. He’d waited nearly a week for the payoff, and when Tony yelped and snapped the suit helmet open with a grimace, he’d merely smiled briefly and held out a hand to retrieve his weapon. 

“Sneaky, Barnes. Very sneaky.” Stark pointed a fork at the dark-haired man over breakfast the following week. A small amount of pancake fell off the end of it as he jabbed in mid-air, and Barton scooped it up without further comment. “I’m impressed.”

“I’m not.” Sam said, spearing a sausage. “He’s supposed to be the best assassin in known history. I mean, come on. We’re all pretty sure he’s responsible for JFK. He shot through Natasha-“ She fixed him with an unyielding look over her scrambled eggs, and Sam faltered slightly in his speech. 

Bucky took the opportunity of a distracted target and slapped Sam firmly on the back, palming his spoon up from his own sleeve where no one could see it, and neatly dropped it down the exposed neck of Sam’s t-shirt. The soldier yelped as the cool metal slid down his back and hopped off the chair, twisting his arms up and behind himself in a futile attempt to retrieve it. 

Steve laughed the hardest, and Sam pretended to be wounded that his friend and commander would find his demise so hilarious. “All’s fair, Wilson. All’s fair.” Rogers winked at him. Sam huffed loudly in response.

“By my calculations, we’re down to four combatants.” Stark announced. 

“Combatants? It’s not the Hunger Games, Tony.” Pepper said, tapping him lightly on the leg with a pointed look. 

“Speak for yourself. We had Katniss, didn’t we?” He responded, and Barton scowled across the table at him and contemplated flinging the orange he was currently peeling segment by segment into Stark’s grinning face. “Anyway. In the red corner, the lovely Ms Potts.” Tony gestured towards Pepper who shook her head and went back to scanning the emails on her phone. 

“In the pitch black corner, we have Romanoff, the Black Widow, spy extraordinaire.” Natasha did not look up from her book as she turned another page lazily, curled up into the couch. 

“In the shiny metal corner, James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Solider, rounding out the Soviet contingent.” Bucky flipped him the bird without looking up from the apple he was peeling one-handed. 

“And the dark horse of the bunch, bringing up the rear-“

“But equalling kills with Barnes.” His subject pointed out hotly, cutting across him, eyes flashing. 

“-And surprising us all beyond measure, three times holder of the – ahem – self-awarded ‘Intern of the Year’ trophy, Ms Darcy Lewis.”

“Hey, I earn that. Every year. Fair and square.” Darcy protested. 

“You’re the only intern in the whole building, Darce.” Jane pointed out fairly. 

“That’s hardly my fault.” 

Three days later, Natasha took out Pepper. There was no video, no debrief and both women refused to talk about it. However, it didn’t go unnoticed that Pepper was suspiciously never in the same room as Natasha for longer than around fifteen minutes for some time after the event. 

Stark had posted a betting pool on the fridge in the common room kitchen. Even the receptionists on the front desk were included, but the odds were overwhelmingly in Natasha’s favour. Even Bucky lagged behind a little, but Steve explained to his grumpy friend that it was probably because he’d kept himself to himself so much that hardly anyone outside the immediate Avengers group knew who he was. 

Steve opted not to mention at that point that he himself had fifty bucks riding on Natasha to win. 

Darcy trailed miserably behind them in the betting pool, but remained optimistic. 

When Bucky managed to take out Natasha, it surprised them all. He’d been circling her for days, and several near hits had put the whole team on edge, even though both parties were silent about their efforts, his to remove her and hers to remain in the game. Steve had nearly jumped through the wall when Bucky had appeared next to him through the steam of the shower, spoon in hand and an altogether murderous look on his face. 

Later, when his heart rate had returned to something close to normal, he’d asked Bucky why on earth he’d been stalking the male shower block for Romanoff. Bucky had mumbled something about the female shower block being too obvious a hiding place, and Steve opted not to take the conversation any further. 

She’d woken to the kiss of metal between her shoulder blades, and sighed into her pillow before rolling over to face him. “So you’re going to take out Darcy then?” She said lazily, stretching like a cat under the silk sheets and feeling her toes curl. She fixed him with a calculating look. “She’ll be easy. She won’t see it coming, no matter how hard she tries. She’s a civilian.”

Bucky rolled away from her and into a sitting position, staring down at the spoon in his hand. His face reflected back at him all bulbous and distorted by the bend of the metal. He considered briefly the possibility that the reflection was not a reflection at all, but the true reality, and the face that stared back at him each morning from the mirror above his sink was the true distortion. With that unhappy thought rolling around between his ears, he grunted in response to Natasha’s words. 

“She was your target.” He said suddenly. 

“Yes.” The redhead replied easily, making no effort to expand any further, and rolling her arms up gracefully behind her head to grip at the headboard and stretch further, her ribcage jutting up against the sheets as her back arched up off the mattress. Bucky paid no attention to the movements of her body, lost in his own thoughts as he picked them apart carefully. 

“You could have-“

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Confused blue eyes met hers and she sighed, resisting the urge to reach out and brush along his bare shoulder. 

“You watch her. When you think no one is looking, especially when you think she’s not watching. You know how she takes her coffee, even though she’s never told you and you’ve never offered to make it for her. You know what episode of The Walking Dead she made it up to before giving it up and swearing it was made of more filler than actual plot. You wait up until she’s gone to bed, just to make sure that she has made it there, that she’s not still down in the lab tapping away at her keyboard and keeping Banner company into the early hours. You worry that one day Banner will turn and she’ll be trapped in there with him.”

Bucky turned from her but not before she caught the storm gathering behind his eyes. 

“Despite the fact that you’re seventy years plus onward from where you should be, by rights, life really is too short. Even for you.” She paused, and this time she did run a light finger up his exposed forearm. “If you feel even half the things I think you do, don’t leave it to chance.”

He grunted again, but she thought she saw something softer pass over his face, albeit briefly. She lay back and shut her eyes. When she opened them again, he’d gone. The spoon he’d left in the middle of the pillow next to her face. She grasped it, smiling to herself. 

Darcy yelped as she was hauled sideways and unceremoniously through a door to what turned out to be a janitor’s closet. Looking up at the dark haired man in front of her, staring down but saying nothing, she sighed in resignation and turned her back to him. “Okay, I had a good run.” She said. “Didn’t expect to get this far and I guess you did nearly take out Fury and Steve so really if you think about it, I’m actually doing better than both of them so-“

Her voice caught in her throat and strangled slightly as she felt soft lips press carefully against the side of her exposed neck. She fought the urge to yelp again, and felt her heart hammer hard against the inside of her rib cage, demanding fervently to be heard. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if he could hear it. 

“B- Bucky?” She managed to choke out, and was answered by another careful brush against her neck, hot breath blowing strands of dark hair every which way as he sighed against her. Light hands grasped briefly at her hips, almost drawing her towards him, then suddenly releasing her – almost pushing her away. 

She spun on her heel to face him, and found him pressed up against the shelves, hands tangled in his dark shaggy hair and a look of panic splashed across his face. “I- I shouldn’t’ve-“ He refused to meet her eyes as he stuttered, and she took a step closer to him. 

“You absolutely should have.” She breathed, standing on tiptoes to get her face closer to his. “And, in fact, if you don’t continue right this instant, I have a spoon in my pocket with your name on it and I guarantee you won’t enjoy where I intend to put it.”

Unwittingly, his mouth cracked into a smile and, after grinning up at it, she reached up and claimed him with her own.


End file.
